Ixa
by Not Much Chance
Summary: GoF. Snape finds out that he has a daughter, a fourth year Inupiaq girl gifted in tribal spellwork. As he tries to connect with her, however, the Death Eaters begin to threaten her to manipulate Snape. When she decides she's going to fight them, everything spirals out of control. How far would you go for family you've never known? Past SS/OC, no present day pairings.
1. The Letter

**Author's Note:** So here it is, my first story. I'm beyond nervous, but I know that criticism and suggestions will be how I get better. It's exciting to finally get this idea out of my head and be able to share it with people. My OC doesn't appear in this chapter, because I want this story to focus on Snape and his life as much as hers, but she will in the next. I know this is a bit short, but I thought it made a decent sized prologue. Please feel free to give me any honest feedback you have.

_Ixa_ means family, be it by blood, marriage or adoption. Both _Uiyula_ and_ Ixalulasraaq_ are words for whirlwind. _Qatraq_ is echo, and _Kanaknaq_ is western wind. I will always provide translation for Inupiaq when it comes up, but in the author's note, not in the middle of the chapter. I don't want to disrupt the reading experience. I hope you enjoy this and thank you all so much for reading!

* * *

Snape was not a man who liked the cold.

Hogsmeade was already a clamoring of students, villagers, shops and sales. Add ice into it and it was quite frankly the last place he'd ever willingly choose to go. But Albus had insisted. Albus Dumbledore was a friend to him even when he didn't want friends; the whole Hogwarts staff were close to each other at least a little due to the old man's meddling. In addition, Dumbledore had decided Snape wasn't getting out enough, and saddled him with Hogsmeade duty for the year. The _year_, as if he were being punished. Granted, the new Foreign Spellwork professor was too young and naïve to handle the students, but it was still an indignity to be out here in the cold when he could be working in the dungeons, basking in the warmth of the cauldron's fire. Instead he'd spent the trip so far breaking up fights, monitoring children and trying not to get a migraine.

By the time that the snow decided to get thick and proper, he was already freezing, so he chose to stick it out in the cold. That was when he saw a tawny owl valiantly fighting towards him against the rapidly picking up wind. It settled upon his shoulder, and he took the parchment enchanted against the snow, squinting at the elegant but crushed together cursive that the Headmaster employed. Why in the name of Merlin was Dumbledore messaging him in the middle of his punishment – pardon me, his 'well deserved time off'? There was a pause as his eyes fought with the fading light to read, and then another as his mind refused to process the words on the paper, just flat out rejecting what he'd read as a delusion brought on by the cold.

_Severus,_ the letter began, which was a bad sign since Dumbledore rarely used first names lightly, _I do not think I need to remind you of your sole relationship after the death of Lily. It is my solemn duty to inform you that Miss Qatraq is no longer with us. She was found dead last night in Ufasiksuq, Alaska-  
_

The paper slipped from his hands; the owl rushed to catch it. He shut his ink colored eyes and tried to recall what breathing was. He remembered Uiyula Qatraq so vividly; remembered her four years teaching at Hogwarts before a school in her native Alaska had been established. They had been friends, real friends, the kind where she would come lay on his couch and talk while he did paperwork and they would brew complex potions together, taking refuge in magic instead of the outside world they did not belong to. He would never belong because he was a former Death Eater, and she would not be accepted for being part of the Inupiaq tribe and using tribal magic, old spells instead of English ones. Other people thought she was foolish to cleave to such spells. He understood, however, what it was to have nothing left but magic. For him, it was his potions, but he understood, and they became something more than friends without ever being anything official.

It was he who had cut off contact with her, with everyone one by one, withdrawing into himself until he was totally alone. It was safer that way. It was easier for him, helped make days bled together until they were weeks and weeks were small bits of months and time was just a daze. Severus Snape was not cold or unfeeling; he had too much feeling, and threw it away with all the force he could muster. But now, with his beautiful Uiyula with her strange accent and round face and perpetual smile dead, everything came flooding back to him. He had hoped that pushing her away would keep her from being another loss like Lily. In reality, he had merely delayed the process. Severus opened his eyes and took the letter back. A hundred thoughts went through him at once. He hoped she had been happy in her icy wonderland she so cherished, a place where no tree dared grow. He hoped that she had gotten to teach until her death as she wished. More than anything, he hoped she had been happy and had forgotten him the way wind whisked away footsteps in the snow.

_An investigation by the American Auror Association is ongoing. Until they have things sorted out, however, they are asking you take custody of your daughter._ He reread the line six times, trying to get it to make sense. _A Bloodline Test was performed a few moments ago, as per the will of Miss Qatraq, who declared you the biological father in the will. One of your current students, a Miss I__xalulasraaq__ Kanaknaq, is your child. Please come to my office so we can discuss this further in private and make arrangements. Your Hogsmeade duty is hereby revoked._ Snape crumpled the paper, ignoring the signature at the end and the well wishes it carried, and let out a strangled sounding laugh. He had only one Native American student at Hogwarts, a girl who lived with her stepfather due to a legal ruling, and yet he had never considered even asking her what tribe she was. He had never realized the hard q's and k's were that of the Inupiaq tribe, that she had long thick hair like her mother, that her face had sharp angles like his, that her eyes were his.

His broken laugh turned to coughing in the cold air, choking on it. She was in his _house_. He had seen her sorted, seen her in the common room, watched her struggle with potions every day for the past four years, and never once had he seen her as anything but a student. Had he ever even talked to her? He remembered that she had been caught outdoors at night in winter many times, but he'd just deducted points and directed her back to bed. He had never even asked her why she kept going out. Maybe if he had, he would have seen the obvious, seen her mother in her, and they could have been a family.

He could have had a_ family_.

By the time Severus reached the castle on foot, he was covered in enough snow he could dismiss the wetness on his face and the redness of his eyes as side effects of the building blizzard.


	2. The Meeting

**AN:** Other than Aanaga, which is Mom, I think all the Inupiaq I used was put in enough context it didn't require explanation. I'm really sorry this was a short chapter, but I really liked the cliffhanger ending and thought it worked. I apologize for the brevity. As always, any feedback, negative, positive, constructive and otherwise is immensely appreciated. Thank you to my reviewer and follower, respectively.

* * *

Ixaluasraaq was drinking butterbeer.

Crying would never touch the pain that stabbed through her heart right now, so she drank instead, sipping small bits, pacing Dumbledore's office, ignoring his attempts to console her. Ixalu, as she was known to her friends, was thinking hard. If the AAA was investigating her mother's death, it wasn't an accident. Her mother sending her and her stepfather to England years ago for their 'protection', this attack, the suddenness of it… there had to be connections. But God, she was so tired. She couldn't think straight. Every little thing reminded her of her mother, from the carpet to the ceiling. At least she hadn't argued with her mother before… before this happened. At least her mother knew that she loved her.

It didn't make the pain go away. She kept pacing, sipping, feeling cold and hot in turns, staring at nothing. Her black hair was in a thick braid that fell to her mid-thighs, and it swung as she turned at random, filled with angry energy and wanting to fall into bed and cry herself to sleep in the same moment. The world was broken. There was no other way to put it. And to make things odder, she now had another father. Dumbledore hadn't said who it was, only that he was coming here. She wondered if her birth father was feeling this dizzy-sick-spiral feeling inside, too. If he hurt like her. It was hard to even process this was real. This couldn't be happening.

"Are you sure my _Aanaga_ is…?" she asked Dumbledore for the twelfth time. He sighed, and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Miss Kanaknaq, if you want to take some time to make peace with this, I will be happy to give you and your father time to grieve," he said softly, kindly, as she looked at him with tired eyes. "It's completely reasonable."

"No. My Taataga needs somebody. I can't leave him alone right now," Ixalu replied, aghast. "I mean, he just found out too, Headmaster…"

She couldn't just ignore him. That was just so wrong by Inupiaq standards, so cruel and so uncaring. He was _ixa_, he was in need, and he was here. Whoever he was, he was just a person dealing with the same pain she was. She wanted to find him, hug him, tell him it was alright. Even though nothing was alright, she would tell him it was and help hold him up through this. And maybe if she distracted herself with that it wouldn't hurt so badly. Maybe if she focused on everything else but this then it wouldn't feel like she was breathing knives and living in a nightmare. She had to do something; her thoughts were a jumbled mess right now. If they just kept rolling by like this, she wasn't sure if she would ever be able to sleep, let alone help her Taataga.

Just as she was wondering if he'd let her call him that or insist on Dad or not let her call him anything special at all, the creaky stone door below the stairs opened. She froze, listening to the footsteps, and then her brow crinkled in confusion as she saw Professor Snape, snow-soaked and tired looking. She watched his face light up in recognition, watched him look her over with new eyes, and a hand flew to her mouth. She turned to Dumbledore to ask if this was her father, but no words came out. He nodded all the same, and Ixalu turned back to Snape, gaze softening from surprised to something almost beyond description.

The first thing she did when she met her father was run forward to embrace him, and she held him tightly.

"…hi," he said awkwardly, hugging her back with timid arms.

"Hi," she replied, and smiled despite herself.

* * *

He hadn't felt this dazed and confused in years.

The good news was that she didn't hate him. The bad news was that they were both too shellshocked to do much more than head off to dinner, where both picked at their food in eerily similar manners. Ixalu's fellow Slytherins ignored her, something Snape observed with quiet disapproval. She wasn't bullied or hated, it seemed, but the world just operated as if she were invisible. No one spoke a word to her. She didn't reach out to speak to them. Even though she was there, life went on around her, not with her, and Severus was reminded of the years when James Potter had finally left him alone. He recalled sitting at a table full of people in total silence, remembered reading instead of eating lunch, slipping away to the common room or the library unnoticed like a ghost. Those were days he didn't like to recall, and he especially didn't like seeing his daughter live them.

It was hard to get used to that thought, the thought of having a daughter. She was flat chested and lithe, with the willowy build of her mother and long hands and fingers like him. He felt a pang of some unidentifiable emotion in his chest when he noticed the pieces of her parents in her. She smiled at him when she caught him looking. She called him Taataga. Snape was grateful he could pronounce the word for 'my daughter' in Inupiaq. Paniga, he was supposed to call her – and he would, because she was. It was just strange to think that after all these years, he wasn't alone. He had a family, a little piece of it, someone else who was tied to him. Now he just had to make sure he didn't mess this up. His own father had been no role model, so he had no idea how to be a good parent. What made a parent good? He had a good idea of what not to do, but would that be enough?

He slipped away from the table early and went to the dungeons, where he retrieved a small supply of non-addictive Sleeping Drought. In little vials, they would be enough for a week or two. He placed them along with a six pack of good butterbeer on his paniga's bed along with a note she would be excused from this week's test, and smiled to himself.

While he still didn't know what he was doing, this would be a start.

* * *

Information always leaked, and in this case it somehow made its way to the only other Death Eater at Hogwarts, Karkaroff.

He appeared before Snape like something out of a nightmare, stepping out of an alcove in the hallway to stand before the former Death Eater with a nasty smile. He held up the crumpled letter, and Snape had a sensation in his chest that often happened just before something horrible occurred; it was like he was dropping, his stomach churning, heartbeat quickening. In the flurry of today's events, he'd all but forgotten about the Triwizard Tournament and the other schools.

"So," Karkaroff said with a smirk in his voice, "Let's talk about your allegiances again, shall we, Severus?"


End file.
